The Victorian Age (Victoria and the Victorians) Question 1
The Victorian age was a period that saw serious shifts in political power. There was the effort for the consolidation and holding of economic positioning of the middle class within political constructs. Commerce and industry burgeoned, as the middle class became more affluent middle class and depriving the low class people. Low class people were thrown out of their lands by the affluent people leaving them with the option of moving into the cities to look for employment. Making the bigger percentage of the working class, the low class people led wretched lives with urban conditions and social changes taking major turns. This took artists in the society during that period the effort of dealing with societal upheavals of the time. They targeted the inequalities of propriety with abundance going to a few people while the majority suffered. The inequalities all started from Queen Victoria’s throne creating concerns of moral propriety and public rectitude.
In the age of doubt, the Victorians faced scientific and faith controversies. Victorians started having altered moral status of aspects that the society viewed as right or wrong. The Victorian age change the cultural construct of England in so many remarkable ways. The culture was responsible for creating doubt from religious concerns into ethical issues and necessities. There were enormous implications of that shift given their manner of affecting the lives, thoughts and debates within the society. The divine rights of the kings became obsolete in suitability to the armor, nobility and royalty privileges and the upper class tastes. Masses of men began getting education as it acted in rewriting of history. It was an age full of imperialism and colonies had an increase in their power and wealth with the spread of the English language guiding global justice and liberty ideals.
The Victorian period raised many questions regarding the place of the woman in the society. Therefore, ‘the woman question’ becomes an issue that extended to the participation of women in political issues. Until the advocacy of the women’s suffrage, women in England had no rights for involvement in matters of politics. There was also the issue of property ownership by married women leading to the culmination of the married women’s property rights. The onset of the industrial period changed the lives of women as well through changing the places of women in the society. Because of the changing situations of the period, middle-class voices were against conventional positioning of women making women to start competing in challenging labor through the development of competing visions. Therefore, the debate of ‘The Woman Question’ was a complex situation that led to so many concerns in the Victorian period.
In the Victorian period, Queen Victoria was the one on the throne and British remained and the most powerful nation worldwide. The nation was undergoing massive industrialization scientific reforms, cultural changes, technology advances and multiple social reforms. The period saw massive expansion in the empire and the expansion led to growth in the economy. The empire remained as the largest comprising of more that 25% of the global population. It included, Canada Australia, India, South Africa, Hong Kong, New Zealand and many other countries. The reign of Queen Victoria had more that 140 million subjects with British nationals have a keen excitement in geographical exploration leading them to open up to many parts of Africa and Asia.
Question 2
Elizabeth Browning is one of the most famous of the lesser poets of the Victorian period. She started writing at a young age then advances to writing on social problems such child labor in ‘The Cry of the Children.’ She also did some novels like ‘Auora Leigh’ purporting social reformation as well as a number of letters. in the letters there is a display of her sentimental and emotional courtship with Robert Browning following their marriage. After the marriage, it was clear that she could not get any inheritance from her father and he disinherited her. However, her publishing success became an inspiration to many writers. She wrote many poems with ‘A Years Spinning’ making one of them.
In her poem ‘A Years Spinning,’ she tells the painful story of an unmarried mother and given the historical context of its writing, it was common for unmarried women to spin yearn. She repeatedly uses the motif of spinning within the piece in a manner that hides the meaning of love making within the spinning. In the piece, there are interruptions by her lover within her working sessions to make pledges of affection. She trustingly allows him into her heart and he makes love to her without noticing his deception ‘That love ne’er ended, once begun; I smiled–believing for us both,’ (Snodgrass 87). What was the truth for only one:. However, her mother is aware of the deceit and tries telling her about it but she unbelievingly thinks that the man would support her and she stops spinning thread. The woman soon realizes that there would be no marriage and that she would remain unmarried and an unmarried mother contrary to the morals of her society ‘My mother cursed me that I heard A young man’s wooing as I spun,’ (Snodgrass 87).
It was unthinkable for women to have children out of wedlock during that period and the death of the child at birth leads to the stop of the spinning. The mother disowns her and the death of the child is an abandonment, which leaves her in pain. ‘I listened in mine agony– It was the silence made me groan! (Snodgrass 87).It is as if the pain of the narrator is over, but on the opening of the fifth verse comes the realization that her place is for continued pain when she says ‘Bury me ‘twixt my mother’s grave,’ (Snodgrass 87). The poem later advances to hopeful wishes for the return of the man for him to know that his acts are done. It leaves the years of spinning to be the short-lived romance and the loss of the unfaithfulness of his love and the reproach of her mother then the death of the child. In overall, the poem was an allegory of what happened in the society during the Victorian period. The women of that generation had full dependency on the women who on most occasions never cared for their plight as seen in the poem reflecting the plight of most women who think men love them until the men abandon them. They promised so much creating a world for the women then in the end abandoning them leading to their dropping back to what the society identified them with like spinning (Snodgrass 87).
Works cited
Snodgrass, Mary E. Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. New York: Facts On File. (2006): 87. Internet resource.
